Mamdani Walks Into a Passover Seder With Don Lemon and Drag Queen Rabbi, Gets Heckled

Zohran Mamdani is clearly aiming to convince the world that he isn’t antisemitic in the most lefty-coded theater-kid way possible. It didn’t quite go as he planned.

The New York City mayor attended what The New York Times called a “hip” Passover Seder on Monday.

The event was also attended by former CNN host Don Lemon, who is in a bit of legal trouble at the moment, and a whole host of other characters, including a drag queen rabbi who phoned in from Jerusalem and George Floyd’s brother, who spoke about “racism,” according to the Times.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at this joke.

As The Washington Free Beacon noted, Mamdani’s attendance at the “postmodern” Seder was controversial given that “he celebrated Ramadan earlier this month with Abdullah Akl, a pro-Hamas extremist who called for the terrorist group to ‘strike Tel Aviv.’”

The Free Beacon also noted that “Mamdani also shared an iftar dinner at Gracie Mansion with Mahmoud Khalil, the antisemitic protest leader who told The New York Times ‘we couldn’t avoid’ the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel.”

This prompted at least one significant attendee to drop out of the event.

The Seder event was briefly interrupted by a heckler who yelled out, “Every Jewish organization is a target,” after Mamdani went into a spiel about how a “rising tide of antisemitism has caused enormous pain for so many Jewish New Yorkers.”

Whatever can be said about Mamdani’s efforts to reach out to Jews of the most left-wing variety, the New York mayor has hardly quashed the notion that he doesn’t at least occasionally hang out with some fairly rabid antisemites and Islamists. Among their ranks appears to be his wife, the “love of his life.”

Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, has now been caught in multiple scandals involving Israel and antisemitism. In one case, she made artwork for an anti-Israel activist who has referred to Jews as “vampires” and called the Oct. 7 terrorist attack “spectacular.”

Shortly thereafter, The Washington Free Beacon uncovered some of her old social media posts in which she praised Palestinian terrorists and liked a post supporting attacks on American troops.

“Taps mic American soldiers fighting in imperialist wars are not brave, nor are they fighting for anyone’s freedom,” a post that she liked stated. “They are mercilessly slaughtering third-world civilians and fighting to maintain American hegemony. That is all, thank you! drops mic.”

Mamdani hasn’t denied these stories. The excuse that the mayor’s office put out to defend his wife has been that she’s a “private person.”

But Duwaji has hardly been a private person. She’s been on the cover of New York Magazine and has been generally feted by the press.

Even Politico admitted that Mamdani can’t keep hiding behind that private person line and noted that his wife’s activities have reignited “concerns about antisemitism that have shadowed Mamdani since last year’s mayoral race and underscore a broader pattern of controversies tied to the online activity of people in his orbit.”

So, I guess the Seder attendance was a poor attempt to head off criticism in a city that already witnessed a dramatic Muslim terrorist attack on peaceful protesters that many in the media shamelessly tried to spin as an attack on Mamdani.

Antisemitic incidents were up 182% in Mamdani’s first month in office, though the New York Police Department will now record “hate crimes” differently, so the reported numbers will drop across the board.

Unfortunately, Mamdani is turning out to be exactly what we thought he was, to quote an old football coach. He’s an open socialist who’s effectively fused together a red-green alliance and has no intent to change course.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.